On Oct. 8, William Nordhaus won the Nobel Prize in economics for his climate change research, which includes a key finding.

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FILE- In this April 17, 2015, file photo a national library employee shows the gold Nobel Prize medal awarded to the late novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez, in Bogota, Colombia. This year’s round of Nobel Prizes begins Monday, Oct. 1, 2018, with the award for medicine or physiology, honoring research into the microscopic mechanisms of life and ways to fend off the invaders who cut it short. (AP Photo/Fernando Vergara, File)

Also on Oct. 8, William Nordhaus won the Nobel Prize in economics for his climate change research, which includes the key finding that targeting a temperature or a CO2 level would have far greater costs than benefits.

In his 2008 book “A Question of Balance,” Nordhaus found at that time that the value of climate change damages is around $23 trillion while the value of climate change damages plus abatement costs under an optimal carbon tax is $21 trillion. In comparison, targeting 1.5 degrees Celsius as the IPCC report recommends may come at a higher cost.

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